Press Releases

eircom underpins Smyths Toys Superstores as online site sees over 100% uplift in Christmas business

Customer reaps results with newly launched eircom AWS cloud offering

Pictured are Ronan Kneafsey, Managing Director, eircom Business and

Dryden Geary, Head of Marketing, Smyths Toys Superstores

eircom has announced that Smyths Toys Superstores, Ireland and the UK’s leading toy retailer, has moved its online IT infrastructure and related data for its growing online toy business, to eircom’s newly launched cloud services platform, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The new IT platform and supporting services were swiftly put in place by eircom to ensure that Smyths Toys Superstores could effectively handle the significant increase in the volume of business activity achieved through its online business over the Christmas period.

Figures from Smyths Toys Superstores have confirmed that its online shopping website, Smyths.com and SmythsToys.com, achieved more than a 100% uplift on the same period in 2011.

The multiyear enterprise cloud services contract that eircom Business has now signed and successfully implemented with Smyths Toys Superstores is designed to ensure that Smyths Toys Superstores has greater ability to scale its use of IT infrastructure at lower cost, providing more effective management and control of its IT services.

With 63 stores across Ireland and the UK, Smyths Toys Superstores is fast becoming one of the largest toy retailers across both markets. In particular, its online toy business has reaped the benefits of the increasing growth in demand for online shopping. The increased interest in buying toys online means that this growth is set to continue in 2013.

Under the terms of this latest deal, eircom is providing a fully managed service supporting the cloud infrastructure powering Smyths Toys Superstores online shopping experience. A key element of the offering is ensuring that Smyths Toys Superstores has 24/7 support and the scalability to provide cloud services that meet peak seasonal demands and that can grow or reduce instantly. In this way, the business can easily adapt to changes in demand for its toy range online throughout the duration of the contract.

Commenting on the announcement, Dryden Geary, Head of Marketing,Smyths ToysSuperstores said: “The SmythsToys.com and Smyths.com sites are a key pillar of our growth strategy and providing our customers with a fast and reliable website where they can easily browse and purchase thousands of our products is critical to our continued success. The eircom solution provides scalability and reliability which is critical in the competitive online world. In addition, the flexibility to increase capacity on demand allows us to ensure we can always deal with the peak periods. Christmas 2012 was our busiest trading period online in the history of the company and with eircom’s hosting solution we had perfect performance and service levels.”

Ronan Kneafsey, Managing Director, eircom Businesssaid: “This is a great example of how a dynamic company like Smyths Toys are relying upon eircom to provide a solution that meets their business needs in a highly flexible and cost-effective way, utilising the global leader in Cloud infrastructure. We are delighted to support Smyths Toys Superstores in seamlessly and securely transferring from their existing IT infrastructure to the Cloud. With this latest eircom AWS Cloud offering, our customers can focus on their core business while we focus on providing the highest levels of availability, security and reliability for their key business systems. As retailers increasingly deploy technology to better serve their customers and grow their business, the reliability of a provider like eircom becomes more and more important.”

Today’s announcement builds on eircom’s recently launched cloud proposition and strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS). For eircom, this new alliance is expected to accelerate the company’s move to provide cloud services to its customers based on a flexible, secure, pay per use, IT infrastructure model.